What makes you feel nostalgic?
Why feel nostalgic in the first place?
What’s the point?
Those black and white slo-mo sequences of the house you grew up in, your mother holding you in her arms, your grandmother soothing your every ache, your grandfather teaching you how to read, write, and think, and see the world, all that is gone.
All those deep places of meaning that you kept so close to your heart that you were ever so afraid to even open or look at, forever treasuring them like all those thousands of pictures you take with your phone but never go through, all that is gone.
All your parents are gone too.
What good or better yet, what would be the purpose of being nostalgic about places, things or people you won’t ever get to talk to, see, touch, caress, smell or even remember in your old age?!
No.
The best approach is to move on, nonchalantly if you can, relentlessly and mercilessly if you must, but forward is the only direction you want to go.
You have a mission. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to forge your own path forward for you and yours, so that when the moment comes, your offspring may have a base of operations, whence they may emerge from.
Your mission is to do better than your ancestors. Much better. Your children will follow in your footsteps, and draw inspiration from your feats.
XXVII
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods,Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay, Horatius.
Your job is to look nostalgia in the face, kiss her goodbye, and push onward, for your family, for God, and for your ancestors, hallowed by their names and memory. Amen!
Götterdämmerung 